The Gemini Divergence (63 page)

AFOAT’s new Vela satellites immediately
detected the Soviet missile launch which plunged the United States
into an emergency alert status. Their concerns were diminished
though, once they realized that the missile was not aimed at any
target within the United States.

Then they were shocked to realize that the
missile was headed directly for the moon base that they had just
discovered.

The missile impacted and totally destroyed
the city.

Many on earth saw the flash but NASA
explained it away as a meteor striking the moon.

Von Sterbenbach was furious and vowed
revenge.

Schwerig was beside himself with anger and
stunned at the same time with the thought that an entire city of
theirs that was larger than the whole Raumsfahrtwaffe had been at
the time that they were hiding in New Swabia, had just been
destroyed in a single instant.

He immediately ordered his men to attack
anything that left the ground from the Soviet Union or the United
States, and continued preparation for the upcoming grand EMP
assault that they had been planning.

*~*

“So much for appeasement!” cried McNamara,
“What the hell are we going to do now?” as he addressed a meeting
of the President and his staff.

“We continue with the Divergence plans,”
answered President Johnson, “With all of the meteors and falling
stars being witnessed around the world, it sounds like we are
making a dent… Are we?”

General Taylor turned to General McConnel,
who was attending his first meeting with the Presidential Staff,
“Well General, The President has asked the Air Force a
question.”

“Oh… Yes Sir… Well there has been a little
confusion as I take over General Lemay’s command and organize the
new positions within the Space Command to… Well… oversee the
Overseers,” McConnel tried to laugh but abandoned the attempt, “Uh…
My most recent reports are that we have only lost one capsule in
the past week and destroyed 3 of their craft. We have AFOAT fast
response crews responding to clean up any wreckage before any
witnesses can figure out what it was.”

The President asked, “Do we have enough crews
to pick up all of the wrecks?”

“Well, luckily Sir, most of the earth is
covered by ocean, so only a small number of crashes actually occur
on land. Even with the land crashes, human habitation actually
covers a much smaller footprint of the earth than most people
think. The odds are overwhelming that if they actually did crash on
land, it is usually some place extremely remote.”

~~~**^**~~~

The Gemini War / The Teething Of Space Command

19 February 1965

Gus and Jack were in Colorado, investigating
another ‘meteor’ incident, that just the night before had streaked
across the eastern Colorado sky and lit up all of the local police
and Air Force switch boards.

The space craft must have completely burned
up, as they usually did; rarely would they actually find any debris
if the space craft had entered the atmosphere at full orbital
speed.

Usually only the densest of metals left over
from the craft would reach the ground in small shards; usually to
be picked up by hobbyists with metal detectors assuming that they
were meteorites.

Since General Lemay had retired, General
McConnel, The new Air Force Chief of Staff, had set up a new secret
chain of command within the Space Command to deal with the
Raumsfahrtwaffe.

They now had Brigadier General Fitzpatrick
who reported directly to General McConnel.

General Fitzpatrick had sent for Gus and Jack
to report to him at Buckley AFB since they were already in
Colorado.

They were in the break room of their new
command center getting coffee before their first meeting when a
General walked into the room and noticed two unknown master
sergeants in the room.

“Sergeants Danuser and Jennings, I presume?”
queried the general.

They both stood to their feet and put out
there hands to shake.

Gus shook first introducing himself, “I’m
Sergeant Danuser, everyone calls me Gus, and this is Sergeant Jack
Jennings.”

The General changed from Gus’s to Jack’s
hands as he introduced him self, “I am General Fitzpatrick, the new
DO of Space Interdiction. I was just getting coffee before our
meeting.”

They both laughed, “So were we.”

“Please, just follow me. We might as well get
started.”

They followed the General into his office,
where he motioned for them to sit.

“I hear that you boys have been quite busy
lately picking up things that have been falling from our
skies.”

Gus laughed, “General, we have been busy
since 1947. There has always been something going on since the
first balloon that Jack and I launched. AFOAT has grown
considerably since then and the missions that we cover have grown
as well.”

“And it is continuing to grow… AFOAT has just
set up a special school just on the other side of Aurora, on Lowry
AFB, to train technicians specializing in all of the disciplines of
research, or ‘gathering’, that the two of you have been practicing
over the years… We’d like to have our technicians wearing a few
less hats than you boys have, if we can. That should also help us
keep everything hush-hush within a larger organization, if each
technician has a much smaller piece of the information pie.”

“I understand Sir.”

“The new NRO has agreed to work more closely
with AFOAT and, I’m sure you already know, has already started
launching a series of satellites called VELA… We’re going to
control those satellites in a secured room… right down that hall,
and we are going to staff it with boys trained at that new school
down the road.”

“Right here?” Gus seemed surprised.

“Yes sergeant, right here. We are also going
to have alternate control rooms for the Corona satellite series, as
well as the Gambit, Quill and Grab satellite systems… and we are
going to have the ability to monitor and control them all from
here… they’ve started building the row of all weather satellite
dishes already… I don’t know how they expect to keep those secret…
you can already see them for miles. I also hear that Doctor Volmer
is helping to design a new satellite series called Aquacade that
will let us know whenever the Soviets are testing their missiles,
and they are planning for deployment a few years down the
road.”

Gus seemed uneasy as he confessed, “It really
kind of makes me feel like AFOAT is growing right past us, and we
are becoming irrelevant.”

“Well… don’t let it make you feel that way.
We still need you boys more than you think… I realize that you men
work for a different command, but that is to mask your reporting
chain. Your primary assignment at this time is to assist and
provide intelligence for me, and I would like for you to train
replacements to do whatever you are doing now, because I have
something different in store for the two of you… I hear from Dr.
Volmer that neither of you will probably be surprised.”

“No Sir, we always get stuck doing whatever
is the newest trend and then have to teach somebody else to replace
us. Recently, it has been the rash of falling space debris.”

“I really feel that cleaning up that stuff is
a job that is below your skill levels now. I have a lot
of…‘chaotic’ leg work that needs to be done. I call it chaotic
because it is almost impossible to categorize.”

Gus laughed as he replied, “No offense sir,
but that sounds like what we have been doing for years
already.”

“I want you boys to start talking to some of
the witnesses and people that stumble across information about this
colossal mess… I have some money for both of you to buy civilian
suits. You’re going to have to sign a receipt and an acceptance of
responsibility to promise that you will use the money to buy suits…
I need somebody that knows the big picture to meet the witnesses
and find out what they have actually seen… So far in the last
twenty years that has been mostly just lights in the sky, but now
there are pieces of hard evidence falling into their back yards and
the last thing that we need is for one of these people to tell the
press that a flying saucer with Nazi Luftwaffe markings just
crashed into their yard.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“I hope so. I need you to mislead them, when
possible, to start thinking that this is all little green men… We
can’t let the public know that World War II hasn’t ended yet, it
would be anarchy.”

“So you want us to tell the witnesses that
they ‘are’ seeing aliens?”

“No, no, no… I want you to lead them to
believe that… Say the people bring up the possibility that the
saucers are man made… Well just blow their opinions off like they
were nothing, but if they suggest that they were aliens, thennn…
get defensive… like, what makes you think that these were aliens?
Then they will think that you are covering up the fact that they
are aliens instead of Nazis…Understand?”

“I guess so.”

“You’ll get the hang of it…I’ll give you a
while to train your crews. You’ll get to meet them tomorrow at
Wright-Patterson. Mr. Volmer wants to move General Lemay’s
collection away from Wright-Patterson to your test site facilities
overlooking Yucca flats, at NTS. He feels, and I agree, that there
is too much possibility of compromise at the Dayton facility. There
is much less of a chance that somebody will come across that stuff
at Groom Lake.

21 February 1965

Witnesses reported a meteor falling to earth
over Kingsley, Oregon.

*~*

They all pack up the items that have been
stashed into the blue room for almost twenty years and load them
onto trucks; an entire caravan of trucks that will carry the secret
cargo across the country to AFOAT’s secret facilities at NTS.

Volmer had pleaded with Lemay at his
retirement to authorize him to move the items to NTS. He felt far
too intimidated by the Generals that constantly worked around
Wright Patterson and asked questions about everything.

Lemay realized that just because ‘he’ had no
problem handling nosy Generals, that it would be a major problem
for Volmer, so he agreed to let him move the collection to Nevada,
into AFOAT’s old NTS facilities.

There was no more above ground testing so
they had a huge unused hanger/workshop that was carved into a
mountainside at Yucca Flats. It was designed to shield it from the
testing that it had been used for in the past.

Lemay also knew that if they ran out of room
that they could just bury the debris collection in the test field.
There would probably not be anybody digging in that valley for
hundreds of years, if not thousands.

Gus and Jack had their hands full teaching
the new men about what they did, while trying to get work done as
they fielded a thousand questions.

Every piece of debris that they picked up
raised a hundred new questions, but they tried to keep the men
learning the facts that they would need to know, to be able to
perform their new jobs.

Once the caravan was packed and onto the
road, Volmer went to catch a transport plane to AFOAT’s McClellan
Central Laboratory at McClellan AFB in order to check on the
progress of the vril analysis.

27 February 1965

Soldiers and civilians in and around Fort
Benning, Georgia, reported a large meteor that emitted a tremendous
roar as it burned up into the atmosphere.

*~*

The Raumsfahrtwaffe began to black out all of
its windows on the moon that allowed light to be seen from
space.

They also covered every thing with lunar
regolith that they possibly could in an attempt to disguise their
installations from further reconnaissance probes.

Von Sterbenbach stubbornly relented to allow
his men to subdue and camouflage his magnificent Schloss Krystal
Adler.

It’s once resonating crystal spires were now
a conglomerate of battleship grey spikes that looked like a rough
garden of ancient volcanic plumes.

4 March 1965

Gus and Jack arrived to their first interview
with witnesses while wearing civilian clothes.

They both bought the cheapest black JC Penney
suits that they could find, and now looked like a pair of poor
Appalachian miners on their way to a funeral.

Earlier that morning, a man was driving down
the highway with some of his employees in his car when they came
across a trio of saucers parked in the road.

Soon after they arrived the saucers ascended
into the sky and flew away.

They walked up to the man’s house and Gus
knocked on the door.

Just as Gus knocked, Jack pulled some things
out of his pocket and handed one of them to Gus, “Oh I forgot, I
picked these up at the gas station.”

When the man opened his door, there stood two
foreboding looking men in black suits wearing sunglasses.